Simple and Patient-Friendly Clinical Diagnostic Tests for de Quervain’s Disease.

doi:10.46940/sjomd.02.1007

Abstract

Abstract De Quervain’s tenosynovitis is a relatively common cause of radial sided wrist pain. The standard clinical tests, including both Eichhoff and Finkelstein’s tests, are very painful; even in a normal individual without any inflammation of the tendons. We propose a set of simple, gentle and more patient-friendly clinical tests with high accuracy.

Highlights

Described eponymously in 1895, de Quervain's tenosynovitis is a relatively common disease presenting with radial sided wrist pain
In the two patients where the severity that the tests detected did not correlate with the laterality of severity in bilateral disease given in the history, the difference was by two points
The tests proposed by the present study show 100%

Summary

Introduction

Described eponymously in 1895, de Quervain's tenosynovitis is a relatively common disease presenting with radial sided wrist pain. Exacerbating factors include any movements stressing the components of the first dorsal compartment; namely the tendons of extensor pollicis brevis (EPB) and abductor pollicis longus (APL). The standard clinical tests, including both Eichhoff and Finkelstein’s tests, are very painful; they can even be painful in a normal individual, i.e. one who does not have any appreciable inflammation in the first dorsal wrist compartment. This reduces the sensitivity of the clinical tests. We propose that the diagnosis of de Quervain’s tenosynovitis can be reached by gentler and more humane tests, which are preliminarily validated by the present study attempting to estimate the diagnostic accuracy of a novel series of four diagnostic tests

Materials and Methods

Results

Discussion